David W. Pfennig was the Caroline & Thomas Royster Distinguished Professor for Graduate Education, Dept. of Biology, University of North Carolina and the Director, Royster Society of Fellows, The Graduate School, UNC. He is broadly interested in the interplay between evolution, ecology, and development and focuses on three main topics. 1) The causes and consequences of a common feature of development: its tendency to be responsive to changes in the environment. This research seeks to understand the impacts of developmental plasticity on diversification and evolutionary innovation, as well as how and why plasticity arises in the first place. 2) The role of competition in generating and maintaining biodiversity. And 3) a striking form of convergent evolution known as Batesian mimicry, which evolves when a palatable species co-opts a warning signal from a dangerous species and thereby deceives its potential predators. He is the author or co-author of over 100 peer reviewed scholarly journal articles and book chapters. In addition he authored a book: Evolution’s Wedge: Competition and the Origins of Diversity.